Lifelines
by otherhawk
Summary: 'The More Things Change' verse. How and why Rusty got his tattoo.


**Disclaimer: I own nothing to do with O11  
**

**A/N: Set seven years before Ocean's 11.** **And in The More Things Change verse.**

**A/N2: For InSilva. For reading it and for wanting it.**

* * *

The room was sweet with flowers and the heady smell of really good sex. Rusty smiled up at Beth as she straddled his hips, 'learning his body' as she called it.

She was beautiful and she was fun, but he already knew this wasn't going anywhere. She'd made it clear from the beginning that she was just coming out of a relationship and all she was looking for was something short, sweet, and mind blowing. Which suited him just fine; she was a doctor, a reconstructive plastic surgeon no less, and while the whole white coat and stethoscope thing was fun, from experience he knew that sooner or later she'd want to sit him down and talk earnestly about his diet and just how likely it was that he'd die of a heart attack before he was fifty. He could do without it. Way he figured it, his genetics probably screwed him up enough already.

"You have led an interesting life, haven't you?" she asked, smoothing her hand over the pale scars on his shoulder Patrick Knight had left behind.

He shivered. "I like to pack in as much living as possible," he said lightly, turning his head and planting a quick kiss on her wrist.

"You know, I can read someone's life in their body," she told him, and he should have stopped it right there. "When a new client walks into my office looking to get a scar repaired, I can tell them when and how they got it."

"Impressive," he agreed, sliding his hands onto her hips suggestively.

She grabbed his left arm and he froze instantly. "Like this one," she said, turning it around so the scars were uppermost. "I can tell..." She frowned. "I can tell from the position it was a defensive wound," she said more slowly. "Made by something sharp. The pattern...a bottle? But it's faded...and the skin's grown around it! Like you got it when you were..." She was staring at him now, a look of open pity. "You must have been _very _young," she said, and it was a whisper.

Nine. Nine, and he could remember the fire alive in his back and the taste of terror choking in his throat as he stood helplessly in front of Dad, watching him bring the bottle down towards his head. The smell of flowers faded away, and it was Dad's breath that was on his face, rank and heavy with vodka.

"Rusty!" Beth was looking at him anxiously.

He sat up on the bed, pulling away from her.

"I...do you want to talk about it?" she asked, reaching out and placing her hand gently on his wrists, and it burned like handcuffs.

He tried to remember how to form words. How to say _anything. _But all he could do was shake his head mutely.

"You know, there's a support group for abuse survivors at the hospital," she offered. "It meets every Tuesday night. I could go along with you the first time, if you liked."

He hated that word. _Abuse. _Abused. It felt like he was being reduced to nothing more than what Dad had done to him. With a shudder, he pulled his hand lightly away from her and stood up, stumbling towards the bathroom.

"That's a good idea," she said quickly. "Why don't you go splash some cold water on your face, and then when you're feeling better, we'll talk, okay?"

Barely listening, he fled inside and shut and locked the door, leaning against it heavily. If he closed his eyes, he could hear Dad's footsteps coming closer. Fuck, he had to get a grip here, but he was _shaking, _and a second later he was on his knees, retching into the toilet, his hand gripping his arm tight like the scars were fresh and bleeding.

No one ever noticed it. But she'd just looked at him and told him what happened, and _was _she the only one who saw? How could he be sure? Maybe everyone had known all along. Maybe everyone watched him with that look of _pity. _

The walls were closing in on him. He had to get _out _of here, he had to get out, and he couldn't bear facing Beth again. He didn't want to talk, not to her, why was that so difficult to understand?

Luckily their evening had started in the bathroom, and he grabbed his pants and shirt off the floor and fell into them, shoving his feet into his shoes. There. Clothes. It was fate. With a half-fearful glance over his shoulder at the door, he eased the bathroom window open and scrambled out and down the drainpipe and disappeared into the night.

* * *

His heart was still pounding as he found his way to the nearest bar and into the nearest bottle of whisky, and he drank and waited, expecting the slow burn of the alcohol to take the edge off his panic. It didn't. An hour later and his hands were still shaking, the memories still whispering through his head.

Fuck. What was happening to him here? He hadn't felt like this in over a decade, but here he was, trembling like a coward, flinching every time someone spoke a little too loud, or the door opened a little too suddenly.

He rubbed his hand across his mouth, angry at himself, and caught sight of the scars on his arm. They looked more obvious than they ever had before, like a brand Dad had placed on him, a promise that Dad owned him, and he'd never be able to truly escape. Futilely, he tried to tug his shirt sleeve down low enough to hide them, feeling small and ashamed and stupid. Damnit, he should be wearing long sleeves. Why had he never thought to cover up properly before?

Right now, he wasn't okay. And that meant he should call Danny – he _wanted _to – but it was Danny and Tess' first anniversary this week, and they were in Madrid, and they were happy, and he didn't want to get in the way.

And he should be able to deal with this, that was the truth. He didn't want to interrupt Danny's vacation over something he should have put behind him a long time ago. Besides, he'd gone and left his phone in Beth's apartment with the rest of his stuff, and he sure as hell wasn't going back for it. His hand squeezed so tight around his glass that it cracked under the pressure. Whisky poured over his hand and across the bar.

He froze as the familiar shout of rage and contempt roared up inside his head.

"Hey, buddy!"

The memory of pain, the promise of more to come, the shamefear at being so clumsy, so _stupid. _

"Hey, buddy, you're going to have to pay for that, you know!"

He looked up and met the barman's eyes. With a shrug, he dropped a hundred onto the bar. He figured he was going to be there for a while.

* * *

Logically, he knew he wasn't being hunted. There was no one looking for him right now. He was safe. But he didn't _feel _it, and he found himself looking over his shoulder everywhere he went, afraid of what – _who –_ might be there.

(_He knew what he was afraid of. But he hadn't seen Dad in years, and Dad probably didn't even really remember him, and besides, he was a grown man now and he wouldn't have to stand there and take it...all that and the fear remained.)_

He left the city. Keeping moving was always his first (_second_) way of escaping his memories. What he had to do was bury them in the back of his head again, but that wasn't exactly easy when every time he so much as glanced at his arm, he thought of the look on Beth's face and it all came flooding back.

This wasn't as bad as it could be, he tried to tell himself. He wasn't sixteen anymore, and he had a handle on it. There were memories, and they were dark and oppressive and omnipresent, but they weren't overwhelming him, and he didn't have the same desperate urge to be hurt and punished. He just had to get through this, that was all.

No matter how much he told himself that, every time he let his mind wander, even a little, he was thrown straight back into the world of punches and kicks and raised angry voices, young and frightened and hurt and _alone. _

He'd never been so aware of his scars before. Now they seemed to burn all the time, and in a little bar somewhere near the beach after too much tequila and too little food, the memories hanging around his head like vultures, he snatched a marker pen up off the bar and violently dashed dark lines over his arm until the scars were invisible.

Huh...

* * *

They could hear the phone ringing from the second they stepped through the door. He exchanged an amused look with Tess, dropping the suitcase to the floor.

"Double glazing salesman?" Tess guessed.

"Probably," he agreed. "They've probably been trying all the time we've been away."

"Mmm." She reached up and kissed his cheek lightly. "You get it – I'll put the coffee on."

Sounded like a plan. He went to pick up the phone, frowning as he noticed Rusty's name on the caller ID. Huh. That was odd. Rusty knew he was away, so why would he call the landline?

"You that anxious to see the photos?" he asked as he answered the phone.

There was silence. Then a woman's voice. "Um, hello? Is this...Danny?"

Fear started to wind its way round Danny's heart, ice-cold and threatening. "Yes," he said tersely. "Who is this?"

"And do you know Rusty Ryan?" she persisted.

There was nothing threatening in her voice. Nothing that suggested this was a ransom demand, or whatever. Not that it mattered; he'd never disown Rusty. "He's my best friend," he said quickly. "What _is _this? What's going on?"

"I'm Dr Beth Culshaw," she began.

_Doctor? _The bottom dropped out of Danny's world. His legs grew shaky and he grasped at the wall for support. He must have made a noise, some wordless sound of denial, because Tess was there in an instant, regarding him anxiously. "What's happened to him, doctor?" he asked hoarsely. "Is he alright?" Of course Rusty wasn't alright, because if Rusty was _alright _he would be calling Danny himself, not giving some doctor his phone.

Tess let a gasp and grabbed his hand, squeezing tightly in desperate support. He didn't look at her, even though he was so, so glad she was here.

"Oh! No, no, I'm not calling as a doctor," she said apologetically.

Thank God. He squeezed Tess' fingers reassuringly, and she gave a sigh of relief.

"I've been dating Rusty for the past couple of weeks," she went on. "And on Friday night something happened, and he left his cell phone here. I've been trying to get hold of him – to give it back, and to check if he's okay – but he hasn't been answering at his apartment. And I checked his phone, but there was nothing marked 'work' or 'Mom' or anything, so I checked what numbers had been called most often. Which was - "

" - me," he cut in. Of course him. His mouth was dry. So maybe she wasn't calling as a doctor, but what she _did _have to say was worrying enough. Friday was four days ago now. No way Rusty left his cell phone for that long if everything was okay. He'd have got it back, one way or another. And that meant Rusty could still be missing or hurt or... "Beth, can you tell me what happened on Friday?" he asked, putting every inch of charm and sincerity he possessed into the question. "Please?"

"I don't know if I should..." she said hesitantly. "I said something that upset him. And I wanted to talk about it, but he wouldn't say _anything. _I would have let it go, but he locked himself in the bathroom and then jumped out the window! I live on the second floor!"

He grimaced. _Not _good. But what the hell had she said? Rusty didn't _get _upset like that, and okay, this had been a two minute phone call, but she didn't_ seem _the type to be deliberately cruel. And yet she'd said something that hurt Rusty enough to send him headlong into flight. "What did you say?" he asked, trying not to sound like he was blaming her.

She hesitated for a long moment. "I _really _don't know if I should tell you..."

He almost wanted to bang his head off the wall in frustration. "Beth, I don't know where he is," he said frankly. "But by the sound of things, I need to find him. Now. It would help me if I knew what was happening."

"Rusty's _missing?" _She sounded aghast.

Not answering his phone, not calling Danny...he'd say that qualified. "Maybe," he said.

"I thought he was just avoiding me," she said softly. "Okay..."

He waited patiently, and he could hear her swallowing hard.

"There are some scars on his arm," she said slowly. "I said something about them...I think he took it badly."

Damnit. Danny's lips were a thin line. He'd never even _met _her so he _knew _she was light years away from being able to make that sort of remark, and he imagined how Rusty would hear it, and how well he'd deal with being taken back to one of the worst nights of their life. "Right," he said coldly. "Give me a place to meet you and I'll come pick up the phone so I can return it."

He scribbled down an address and promised to meet her in an hour. Hanging up the phone, he turned to Tess.

"Rusty's missing?" she asked in a hushed voice.

"Looks like it," he said tersely, and he only relaxed a very little as she took his hand. "Something happened, and he took off from his date's place in the middle of the night Friday, and she's been trying to get hold of him ever since. He left his cell behind. I know what it sounds like but - "

" - no," she interrupted him. "No, you know him better than anyone. If you think there's something wrong, there's something wrong. Danny, what _happened?"_

"She said something," he said reluctantly. "About something that happened back when Rusty was a kid."

Tess didn't know anything about what Rusty's life had been like when they were kids. But she was far from stupid and he knew she had more than enough clues to figure out it hadn't been all sunshine and roses. For a start, she knew that he'd left home when he was seventeen and Rusty had been with him, and she knew Rusty was almost three years younger than him. Most of all she knew – as well as anybody could – how he felt about Rusty, and that he would _never _have allowed that to happen unless it was the best option.

And that was why he wasn't surprised when she took a sharp breath. "Oh," she said. "Well, that was either very stupid or very cruel."

He almost smiled. "Stupid, I think."

She nodded and squeezed his hand again. "Go," she said, leaning up to kiss him gently. "Find him. Bring him home."

He would.

* * *

He wasn't surprised, when he went by Rusty's apartment, to find it empty. Looking round, if he had to guess, no one had been here since Friday. There was an open bottle of wine on the counter, a dozen or so messages on the answer machine.

For a moment, he thought about calling Saul. Thing was, if Rusty had gone to Saul, then either Saul or Rusty would have called _him. _No, this was Rusty running off like he thought he wanted to be alone.

Fortunately he realised pretty quickly that Rusty wasn't actively trying to hide from _him. _He'd booked flights and hotels using aliases that Danny knew, making his way down south.

Danny followed. Smiling charmingly and asking questions all the way, and that told him that Rusty was drinking too much, eating too little and not saying a thing, but it also told him that Rusty was alive and not hurt, and functioning well enough to pass as okay. Didn't make the urge to find him any less.

Truth was, it hurt knowing that Rusty was out there on his own right now. If what the doctor had said had thrown Rusty back to an earlier time in his life, Rusty vanishing had done the same for Danny, and he remembered those terrifying days after after they left home when Rusty had gone missing, coming back drugged and bruised and marked. What wouldn't he have given then to have the skills and contacts he had now. To feel so confident he _would _find Rusty.

And every second he wasn't moving he found himself thinking further back to when they were kids and every second Rusty was out of his sight was a second Rusty could be being beaten. Difficult to believe they'd lived like that for so long. Yes, danger and violence were all part of the life they'd chosen now, but that was in their control. Danger was a fleeting thing, and if they were clever – careful – they could avoid it altogether if they chose to. Back then it had been an inevitability. Every time he'd sat with icepack pressed to Rusty's face, every time he'd sat soaking up blood with the sleeve of his sweater, every time he'd kept watch so Rusty could sleep and feel safe, he'd known there would be a next time.

Rusty got hurt and no one cared, and looking back now, looking back as an adult, that last part might just be even more horrific than it had been at the time.

When he thought of their childhood, he remembered the bright spots, not the bad, and he hated the fact that this was all being brought up again. And it would be so much worse for Rusty. Because Rusty's memory was a living thing, spread across all five senses, and Rusty remembered _everything. _Every detail. And coping with that was never easy.

Danny longed to find him. He couldn't stop imaging Rusty alone and afraid and hurting, and it drove him crazy.

Took him a few days but he eventually ran Rusty to ground in a quiet little hotel on the outskirts of San Francisco.

* * *

He was nine years old again, standing there shivering in his ragged pyjamas while Dad raged above him.

"_Look at you! Fuck, you're pathetic. Just like your fucking mother." _

His back was on fire and already he could feel the t-shirt starting to stick to his broken skin. He felt sick and afraid, deep inside himself. Dad was too close to him, the words spitting against his face.

"_Your mother's a stupid slut, boy. All women are. She'll be off rubbing up against anyone who'll take her in for the night, you'll see. Want a drink?" _

Dad forced the bottle against his mouth – he felt the crunch against his teeth and then the burn of cheap vodka making him choke and cough.

He wasn't supposed to be here. He wasn't supposed to be here anymore. He was supposed to be far away and safe, but here he was and when he took a step towards the door, Dad swung the bottle at his head and instinctively he threw his arm up to block it, and there was pain and when he looked there they were, the same old scars, slowly oozing blood. His brand.

He tried to run. Dad reached out to grab him. This time around he felt the massive hand closing around his shoulder, and he was dragged all the way back until they were back in his bedroom again, and he was forced back onto the bed, lying on top of that itchy blanket which hadn't been washed in three years. Dad towered over him, the bottle in his hand somehow whole again, and Rusty tried to stare him down defiantly, but he couldn't stop the little breathy gasp of fear as Dad pulled his arm back, and he couldn't stop the cry of pain as the bottle shattered across his shoulder, the glass digging in deep as Dad dragged the broken bottle down his arm.

"_Hey! Hey, you're alright. 's just a dream, you're not there anymore. He can't hurt you, Rus'. I'm here. I'm here and you're safe." _

Danny's voice. For a second he looked up at Dad in confusion, and then he blinked and he could feel Danny's arms around him, Danny pressed up close to him.

"I'm here," Danny said again.

For a few long minutes he lay there, shaking, his eyes still closed, the aftershock of the dream still trembling through him, and he took comfort knowing Danny was there, and gradually he relaxed back into Danny's arms.

His head was still fogged by whisky and he was so very tired. "Don' leave," he whispered sleepily.

He felt the quick brush of a kiss against his forehead. "Never," Danny promised.

* * *

Danny lay beside Rusty as he slept, keeping watch for more nightmares. Might not be the reunion he'd been hoping for, but the empty bottles, the smell of whiskey and the fact that Rusty had fallen asleep fully clothed told him he wasn't going to get anything coherent till morning.

Briefly he considered making Rusty more comfortable – removing his suit jacket at the very least – but he didn't want to disturb him any more than necessary. Instead, he contented himself with pulling Rusty's shoes off and letting them fall gently to the ground. Then he carefully tucked the blanket round Rusty's shoulders, made a quick call of reassurance to Tess and settled in to wait.

He'd found Rusty. Everything else could come later.

* * *

Daylight came as a rude and unpleasant shock. He screwed his eyes shut with a silent moan of protest and tried to bury his face in the pillow.

Cool fingers brushed over his forehead and a second later a glass of water was gently pressed against his lips.

He took a sip, swallowing painfully, suddenly aware of just how dry and disgusting his mouth was.

"I don't have any aspirin," Danny murmured apologetically.

Danny. He smiled. He'd dreamt Danny was here, except apparently that hadn't been a dream. He frowned, because his memory wasn't booting up right – and he _hated _that – but he'd thought... "You're in Madrid," he told Danny, puzzled, as he took the glass out of Danny's hand, twisting round to look at him properly which proved to be a mistake as his head resumed pounding.

"Got back three days ago," Danny said, his hand resting on Rusty's shoulder.

He screwed his face up. "It's Friday again?"

"Uh huh," Danny agreed.

"Shit," he said with feeling. "Sorry." Danny would have been expecting to see him, and Danny would have been worried...but there was more than that in Danny's voice. There was something here he wasn't quite getting.

"I got your phone back," Danny said, nodding towards his bedside table.

Rusty craned his head to look. That was his phone alright. And that must mean -

" - yeah," Danny nodded. "She called me soon as I got back. She'd got my number from your phone."

Oh.

"She told me what she said," Danny said with no particular inflection.

Yeah. He closed his eyes briefly. "I freaked out," he admitted unsteadily. "It was the way she was looking at me. I just...I couldn't stop thinking about it." About _Dad. _He didn't say it, but he knew Danny heard anyway. Even now, Dad still had so much power over him.

"It's alright," Danny said like a promise, his hands loosely wrapped around Rusty's.

"It's supposed to be," he agreed, his throat tight. He felt stupid and wretched, and his thoughts were slow and sluggish.

Danny looked at him for a long time. "Okay," he said at last comfortably. "So here's the plan. You go take a shower and I'll pick up some breakfast. There's a few places across the street. Then we eat and we talk."

Normally he would try to avoid the talking. But right now he was still miserable and there was still unhappy tension under Danny's eyes, and he nodded slowly. "Yeah," he agreed. "That's a plan, alright."

With a soft smile, Danny held his hand a moment longer.

* * *

He stumbled through to the bathroom and knocked the shower on, before sitting down heavily on the edge of the bath and rubbing at his sore arm.

Wait... He frowned in slow realisation. It shouldn't be hurting anymore. The bottle...that had just been in his dream, his arm had healed a long time ago, except it clearly hadn't because it was hurting now.

With a sense of disconnect, he slowly peeled off his jacket and shirt, and found himself gazing down at his arm covered in plastic wrap. Beneath it he could see thick black lines.

Oh...

"Danny?" he managed to call, not taking his eyes from his arm for a second, hoping against hope that Danny hadn't left yet. "Think I might have done something stupid."

The bathroom door opened in an instant and Danny was standing in the doorway, looking him over anxiously. He caught sight of the plastic wrap, and the anxious stare slowly turned to a frown. "What...oh." He came over and sat carefully beside Rusty. "Think 'stupid' about covers it," he said grimly.

"Yeah," Rusty agreed, swallowing hard.

"You looked at it yet?" Danny asked.

He shook his head, apprehension running through him. Piecing his memory back, he only had a very hazy impression of pain, buzzing and a sense of triumph as a redhead with dozens of piercings bent over his arm. He had no idea what he'd asked for. Hell, he'd never even seriously thought about getting a tattoo. Okay, so he liked them, maybe even wanted one, but pragmatism had always won out before the thought became any more than idle speculation. Tattoos were pretty near the top of the list when it came to things that appeared under the heading 'distinguishing features' and that was the sort of thing any professional really tried to stay away from.

"Well, let's take a look," Danny said, carefully unpeeling the tape from Rusty's skin and gently unravelling the plastic wrap. A certain amount of black ink came away with it to his surprise.

Holding his breath, he looked down at his arm.

_Huh. _

The tattoo..._his _tattoo...was simply gorgeous. Stark black lines stood out against tanned skin, elegantly following the contours of his arm. It looked right on him. It looked like it belonged.

"You like it," Danny stated, watching him closely, and Rusty knew the idea of getting a tattoo had never even _casually _crossed Danny's mind.

"Yeah," he agreed, still marvelling.

"Good," Danny said briskly. "Cos I hear they're a bitch to remove."

He looked up anxiously and he knew Danny was still caught up on the whole _distinguishing marks _side of things, but this was important and he'd made the decision without Danny. "Do _you _like it?" he wondered, asking Danny to put all that aside, just for now.

For a moment, Danny didn't answer, taking his arm and looking it over consideringly. "Yes," he said at last. "Yeah, I do. It looks good on you."

"I can't see the scars," he said wonderingly. Oh, they were still there, but the edges of the tattoo ran along them until you really had to squint to pick them out. At a casual glance, never.

Danny dropped his arm slowly. "Yes," he said in measured tones. "I suppose it does." He sighed. "Do you think it'll help?"

He couldn't see the marks Dad had left on him anymore. Instead there was something _he'd _done, something that declared this was him. He gazed at Danny, trying to explain all that and Danny nodded slowly.

"Okay then," he said, and he glanced at the shower with a frown. "Did they say if it's okay to get it wet?"

He blinked.

Danny sighed. "Just how much of this important life decision do you remember anyway?"

"Not very much," he admitted.

"I thought there were rules about tattooing drunk people," Danny muttered, completely unfairly because they both knew Rusty could drink a lot before appearing anything less than stone cold sober to outsiders. Something else Dad had given him.

"I guess I'll just keep it out the water for the moment," he said with a shrug.

"Good call," Danny nodded innocently. "I'd hate to see it wash away."

Rusty just looked at him.

* * *

He stayed in the shower for a long time, until it felt like he'd drowned the worst of the hangover. Even then, when he came out the bathroom Danny was nowhere to be seen. He frowned; getting breakfast didn't normally take that long. Before he could really start to wonder if he should be worrying – and just as he was reaching for his phone – Danny walked back in with a bag of fast food and a tube of something which he promptly threw to Rusty.

"Nappy cream?" he blinked as he caught it. "You commenting on my maturity?"

"I called Sharlie," Danny explained. "Asked her for a few aftercare tips for tattoos. She says if you rub a very thin layer of that over it every few hours, it shouldn't crack. She also said it won't wash off, but you should keep it from getting too wet for a few days at least. And to avoid rubbing at it, and either go to the place you got it from or come by hers next week to get it checked out and touched up if you need it."

"Huh." After all these years, Danny watching out for him – _taking care of him –_ should be something he could take for granted, and yet...he smiled.

"I know," Danny said, in answer to the unspoken declaration, and clearly Danny had decided he was Han Solo again.

Under Danny's watchful eye he sat and applied a thin layer of cream to the tattoo.

"She also asked if you'd noticed how clean the place was and if you'd made sure to check their hygiene certificates and whether they used a fresh needle," Danny added conversationally.

It hadn't been uppermost on his mind, he admitted to Danny with an apologetic grimace.

Danny's gaze grew a little more focused.

He sighed. "Why do I feel like there's going to be a hepatitis test in my near future?" he asked gloomily.

"Probably because there's going to be a hepatitis test in your near future," Danny answered easily.

He pressed his lips together. "You know you are - "

" - doesn't make a difference," Danny said evenly.

He sighed again. "You're forgiven if there's pancakes and syrup in that bag."

"Take a look," Danny invited.

He did and the smile dawned. "You're forgiven."

He waited until half the food was gone and Danny had drank most of his coffee before casually asking "Do you ever think about going back?" He didn't bother saying where. They both knew where.

Danny suddenly put a lot more effort into eating his muffin than was strictly speaking necessary. "Maybe," he said at last, when Rusty didn't look away and he couldn't procrastinate any longer. "I think about going to visit Dad's grave, sometimes. Clear it up a bit, bring some flowers..." He shrugged. "I was going to do it at the ten year mark, but there was that thing - "

" - with Eric in Tahiti," Rusty said guiltily, because that had been all his fault. He tried to apologise but Danny's eyes called him an idiot. "It'll have been fifteen years this fall," he offered instead. "We could go."

"Yeah," Danny said shortly, and truthfully there were plenty of other reasons why Danny wouldn't want to head back to their home town. He frowned, because Danny wasn't finished. "I wrote to Mom a couple of years back," he blurted out. "Just after I asked Tess to marry me. You were still in Rio, and I just wanted to tell her stuff."

Oh. He swallowed hard. He hadn't known anything about this. "What happened?"

A shrug, and Danny studied the back of the fast food bag intently. "She didn't write back," he said with a small smile. "I'm not surprised. I talked about you, and I was evasive about work, and I guess nothing had really changed. But then I wondered if maybe she'd moved, or the letter could have got lost in the post..."

Of course he did. Danny was an optimist and Rusty loved that about him, even as he hated how easily it could leave Danny hurt. He reached out and gripped Danny's hand.

Danny flashed him a bright smile. "So when it came time to write the invitations, I thought about tracking her down. Making sure she got one."

"Why didn't you?" he asked softly.

There was a pause and Danny squeezed his hand. "I realised introducing her to Tess was the _last _thing I ever wanted to do," he explained lightly.

Yeah. Rusty remembered the way Danny's Mom had used to look at him. The cold contempt and disgust. And while he wouldn't – now – say that was alright, it was what he'd grown up to expect and he could deal with it. Tess wouldn't understand and it would hurt her, and maybe, just maybe, seeing the way Danny's Mom looked at _Danny _would hurt _her _even more than it hurt _him._

There was a mix of relief and regret in Danny's eyes, and he hated the fact that Danny had been carrying this on his own. "Did you tell Tess? "he asked hopefully. "About the letter?"

Slowly Danny shook his head.

Rusty curled his fingers round Danny's. "You should have told one of us," he scolded mildly.

Danny raised an eyebrow and pointedly looked around the hotel in a silent reminder that maybe Rusty didn't want to be talking to loudly about who was keeping _what _to themselves.

Alright. So he was a hypocrite. Danny should still have told him.

"So what about you?" Danny asked intently. "You ever think about going back?"

"Yeah," he admitted, and he watched as Danny's eyes grew dark and tense.

They both knew that while Danny had always longed for a closer relationship with his parents, Rusty had just wanted to escape his. He should have been able to leave without a backwards glance. (_But that had never been true, had it?_)

"Don't worry," he said, as reassuringly as he could. "I'm not looking for the big reconciliation scene." His skin was crawling at the _thought. _"Don't even have any questions I think he could answer. 's just..." He hesitated, trying to find a way to explain, and Danny waited patiently. "Sometimes, I just want to look him in the eye and tell him he was wrong. And that I _know _he was wrong." He stopped for another long moment, the words almost choking him, and it felt like he was nine years old again and speech was somewhere just beyond his reach.

"Rus'..." Danny said softly, his thumb brushing lightly over Rusty's knuckles.

He looked away, staring down at the ground and taking a deep and unsteady breath and he added in a whisper "And sometimes I think I could see that if he was just a man and not a monster, maybe the nightmares would stop for good."

Danny carefully reached out a hand and pressed it to Rusty's cheek, and Rusty leaned in to the touch for a long, desperate moment. When he looked up, he could see on Danny's face that Danny wanted to argue, to insist that Dad _was _a monster, that no one who would take a kid and hurt them like Rusty had been hurt deserved to be called a man...but that wasn't what Rusty meant and they both knew it. He wanted to know that Dad wasn't some untouchable nightmare made flesh.

"Trouble is," he went on with the briefest of smiles. "If I have to go back to convince myself of that, he's already won, hasn't he? I should be able to just say 'You have no power over me' and move on."

In other circumstances, Danny would probably have made the David Bowie joke that was just waiting to be told. "Rusty..." he said softly. "You have a life that he couldn't even _imagine._ You've got friends who love you, people who would die for you, a job that you love, you've travelled all over the world, money is easy and you got the nice apartment and the...okay, so your car is a piece of shit."

"Hey," he protested mildly, but he was smiling.

"You have all of that," Danny went on. "And he's never gonna have any of it."

"Plus I have a great tattoo," Rusty added seriously.

"Plus you have a great tattoo," Danny agreed. "You got all that for yourself. There's no way he wins, Rus'. No way. But if you need to see him again to convince yourself of that...well, I'm coming too."

"With a gun in your pocket," Rusty said lightly.

Danny didn't smile.

He sighed. "Danny, I'm all grown up now. He can't hurt me in the same way."

"No, he can't hurt you in the same way," Danny said, his eyes dark. "That's not the same thing as saying he can't hurt you at all. He's still a vicious thug. And Rus', I was almost eighteen when we left. I did grow up. I got taller, he never seemed to get any smaller."

"Terrific." He sat back with his hands clasped behind his head and stared at the ceiling. Dad would be in his fifties now. No more scary than any other over-the-hill 'vicious thug'. Men like Dad were rarely even worthy marks. He sighed. Danny was right. He had so much more in his life than Dad ever would, so much more than he'd been able to imagine he ever could back when he'd been a kid. "You know," he said conversationally. "I'm pretty sure I remember saying last time that I wasn't going to talk about this anymore or let it get to me."

Danny laughed comfortably and perched on the arm of the chair, his arm draped looking over Rusty's shoulders. "I think you're allowed to freak out once every twelve years or so. That seems reasonable."

He grinned unwillingly. "I'll make a note in my diary for when I'm forty," he said.

"Right," Danny agreed. "And then that time you can call me in advance."

He paused. Wrapped up in the light, joking tone was a hell of a lot of hurt _you-should-have-called-me._ "You were in Madrid," he said softly. "It was your anniversary, Danny."

"Uh huh." Danny studied him for a second. "Thought we got this sorted at Christmas."

"Not the same thing," he said instantly. It wasn't. Christmas had been about him not being left out. This would have been him intruding on time that indisputably should belong to Danny and Tess. "It's different."

"Okay," Danny agreed affably.

He blinked. He'd been mentally gearing up for the argument and he'd never expected Danny to agree with him so easily. "Okay...?" he repeated suspiciously.

"Sure." Danny's smile was bright and hard. "And when we get back to New York _you _can explain Tess how you think that _she _thinks that our anniversary is more important than you being hurt enough to vanish for a week."

He winced. He found it all too easy to imagine the expression of _hurtanxiousearnest. _He'd seen it at Christmas and he had no particular desire to see it again.

"And while you're at it, you can explain it to me," Danny added fiercely, a complete lack of amusement in his eyes.

He bit his lip. "It's just - " he tried to explain.

" - I know," Danny said, rich sympathy in his voice, and he _did _know. Wasn't like Rusty was the only one who never wanted to talk about this shit. And if their positions were reversed, well, Danny would never want to get in the way of Rusty's happiness either.

All of a sudden, Danny took his hand and slipped down to kneel on the floor. Bemused, Rusty blinked down at him as he gently started turning Rusty's arm over, studying him carefully.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Learning you," Danny said shortly.

Oh. He sat back and let Danny look at the tattoo. There was a whole part of him that Danny didn't know, and that had to be driving him crazy.

"I should have called you," he admitted after a second.

"Yes you should," Danny said, in a voice that brooked no argument, his eyes still fixed on Rusty's tattoo. He stayed knelt down, clutching Rusty's hand for a second longer, then he sighed and pressed the hand to his lips briefly. "We should go see Saul soon," he suggested, as he took his seat again.

He smiled. He knew Danny wanted him to leave all thoughts of Dad behind again. And Saul was everything to him that Dad never had been. He could do with regaining some equilibrium.

"Tess is going on a course on Monday," Danny added. "A three day thing on Conscious Leadership. We could go then."

Sounded good. Although he had a thought he was going to wear long sleeves all the while he was there. At least until the story behind the tattoo was less recent and raw. "Conscious Leadership?" he repeated. "Wouldn't unconscious leadership be better?"

"Like leading in your sleep?" Danny asked, grinning.

Like the way Danny could take charge of any situation without even thinking about it. The way he walked into a room and everyone looked to him for answers. But then everything that was remarkable about Danny probably couldn't be taught.

Danny's eyes were soft. "You know I'll always come find you?"

He knew. And silently he promised that he'd do his best to make sure that Danny didn't have to. "Let's go home," he said at last.

* * *

**A/N: Thanks for reading, please leave a review if you have a minute!**


End file.
